Our biggest supported housing feedback event in 17 years!

Our charity’s biggest event to date – a milestone for our supported housing organisation!

On 14^th August 2024, we invited our valued tenants with their support workers and family and friends, trustees, care partner guests and staff to attend one of our much anticipated feedback events. The Summer Tenant Engagement Party was a bustling and joyful get together for over 110 members of our supported housing community to enjoy.

After setting up, the lovely St. Mildred’s Centre in Addiscombe, Croydon was adorned with custom-made balloons, yellow and green ZHC inspired tablecloths, shimmery curtains and a range of summer-themed decorations. Our guests from all over Croydon and Sussex filled the hall and enjoyed not just the main venue but two beautifully maintained gardens outside with ample seating to relax and chat.

A summer party supported by good friends of our housing charity

We were joined by the brilliant and talented DJ Soul Sista, representing our good friends at Club Soda. Our DJ did a fantastic job of keeping the good vibes alive by pumping energy into the venue – so much that many tenants, support workers and staff couldn’t resist joining her on the dance floor for hours until the music stopped! Special moments such as these were captured by talented photographer and videographer, Dylan Barker (@dyl_barrker on Instagram).

The fabulous team from Parable helped make dance accessible and brought colourful streamers for dancers to express themselves with. They performed a wonderful job of making our tenants feel comfortable, safe and free on the dance floor. We were thrilled seeing tenants’ fantastic dance moves!

“[She] knew people there from other properties and really enjoyed herself. The company was good, the people and the atmosphere she all really enjoyed as well.” – Support Worker

“I had a good time and made lots of new friends” – Tenant

When our guests needed a break to refuel, we had a selection of buffet food available and range of hot and cold drinks to satisfy everybody’s tastes.

The biggest success – our supported housing tenants enjoyed themselves!

The event gave our staff the rewarding opportunity to see the faces of the tenants we all work hard to support. Our team all appreciated interacting with tenants and support workers on the day, getting to know them or catch up with them, and seeing them enjoy themselves.

“[They] both had a great time. They have different tastes (one more interested in food and the other who likes music and dancing) so they both got something out of it. The vibe was really good, they enjoyed it, and they were still talking about it long after.” -Support Worker

As with all our engagement events, tenants were given the opportunity to share their voice about their homes. We collected invaluable feedback about what our beneficiaries think of our housing support services and what we can do to enhance their homes.

The main event – supported housing tenants share feedback about their homes

The centrepiece of our party was the feelings board – an interactive and engaging method of collecting sentiments to how tenants felt about the prompt: “How is your home?” Tenants chose to respond using green, red or yellow faces to signify happy, sad, and neutral feelings. This gave our tenants, many with learning disabilities or autism, an opportunity to share how they feel in an accessible way. The feelings board was a huge success with many tenants enjoying placing green, smiley faces on the board to represent their happiness in their homes.

Our easy read style feedback forms were also distributed to collect more detailed feedback about tenants’ homes. Our staff were incredibly pleased – and proud – to see so many positive comments about our services. We value all kinds of feedback we received which enable us to improve the quality of our services even more.

We’re also grateful for the support we received from Switchee, who we’ve recently been partnering with to promote smarter, more efficient, and healthier energy use in some of our tenants’ homes. We’ve been able to reduce energy consumption already in some properties using their innovative smart thermostat technology.

Joined by our special supported housing energy partners – Switchee

Switchee staff came in full force for our event, alongside their interactive ‘resident education’ van, Mitchee. The interior was designed to resemble a comfortable home environment and included a demo Switchee device and educational material – offering an interesting opportunity to enjoy and learn from. Staff and support workers took this unique chance to enjoy the immersive experience, which helped them to raise their awareness about Switchee and responsible energy usage.

“It was a pleasure to see the support workers with the residents and have the opportunity to interact with them. We had some valuable conversations.” – Ashley, Customer Success Manager at Switchee.

One of our proudest moments – bringing our supported housing community together

We were so pleased to have the biggest attendance of any of our tenant engagement events. St. Mildred’s Centre became the perfect backdrop for attendees to dance, enjoy the warm weather outside and connect with others. With over 110 people in attendance including two care partner CEOs from Frontier and Wisdom, the event was a real success, and we can’t wait to see everyone again at the next one.

We’ll leave you with our favourite quote from one of our tenants, found on the back of a green, smiley face – “Everyday we need to party!”